ABSTRACT
Real-life events like notorious crimes, disasters, and scandals, presold to audiences via exposure in the daily press, have long been prime candidates for cinematic exploitation. Along with other examples of popular mediatabloid newspapers, popular songs, comic books, and so forth-realitybased exploitation (rbe) fi lms can be viewed as a kind of social document of their time period. There is a universal fascination with crime, scandal, and disasters, but the topics selected for fi lm treatment and the manner in which they are depicted on-screen are revealing. Hollywood fi lms based on such topics have been quite common, but in Mexico, this type of motion picture was relatively rare prior to the 1970s. This chapter will examine the manner in which Mexican rbe movies refl ect (and distort) the facts, why they became popular in Mexico in the 1970s and beyond, and what the public and offi cial reaction to rbe fi lms has been.
